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In conjunction with A&C Black, The Stage is please to present a chapter from the publication 'Secrets of Performing Confidence' by Andrew Evans.

Permission to reproduce the material from the following title is kindly granted from A&C Black publishers

The title listed below can be purchased from the A&C Black website.

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Secrets of Performing Confidence

by Andrew Evans
© 2003 Andrew John Evans

Chapter 7: Overcoming Performance Anxiety

In the last chapter we looked at how to manage the physical side of stage fright - the adrenalin response that takes place on occasions when we perform. We can see this in the diagram below, which we looked at in the previous chapter.

Figure 7.1 - Changes in mental and bodily anxiety up to and into performance

This diagram shows that while the physical symptoms of arousal typically occur just before and some time into the performance, the mental and emotional anxiety surrounding a performance can last for days or even weeks beforehand. Such pre-meditated worry also tends to recede during performance as the mind turns to the immediate task in hand, but because it is of a different nature to the actual arousal symptoms, it needs to be dealt with separately.

It is not surprising that there is some degree of pre-meditation before an important performance. Performing is a highly skilled business - it requires the equivalent technique of airline pilots or surgeons, who also have to concentrate for hours without being able to stop for a moment and walk away. No lives are at risk, but there is the added problem of having your work written up in the papers by critics for all to read. Some of the factors in stage fright can be generalised into a 'performing anxiety syndrome'. This may include:

• performing technically difficult material
• expecting to be criticised for not being note or word perfect
• coping with a number of unpredictable situational variables
• having to rely heavily on concentration and memory
• dealing with personality difficulties ('attitude problems') among fellow performers
• having to be constantly on top form despite rehearsals, travelling and transporting gear
• having to cope with exacting studio situations involving large sums of money
• having to deal with highly-skilled tasks in real time for three hours or more without stopping.

Some of the most common emotional responses associated with stage fright are the following.

Before the event

• Advance experience of anxiety preceding an event.
• Disturbed sleep, restlessness and stress before the event.
• A sense of catastrophe in which there is no proportion to the threat.
• An inability to think constructively and analyse problems objectively.

During performance

• Disorientation and inability to focus attention, e.g. on where one is in a presentation.
• A feeling of having forgotten one's craft, e.g. words, basic knowledge.
• Subjective feeling of loss of control - the brain 'goes blank' and the head is 'swimming'.
• Constant worry about the inability to perform successfully.
• A feeling of being alone or deserted.
• A sense of desperation at not having the power to deal with the event.
• A feeling of paralysis and inability to act, in which the body feels inert.
• A desire to escape or sabotage the event.
• A desperation to come to the end and get it all over with.
• An anticipation of failure and humiliation in front of others who expect success.

Maladaptive thoughts and behaviour

The presence of stage fright also can produce a range of behaviours which are maladaptive and make the problem worse. Examples include:

• vomiting before events, sometimes self-induced to avoid the idea of doing it in front of assembled people
• cancelling events for no reason other than the fear of not being able to cope
• turning up late or drunk in an effort to 'escape' the problem
• walking off during an event
• faking things or leaving bits out.

Maladaptive thoughts can be one recurrent over-riding fear. Sometimes such fears result in hypervigilance or exaggerated sensitivity to one particular feature of the adrenalin response, which is then blown up out of proportion, for example:

• being suddenly sick in front of or over the assembled people (feeling of nausea)
• suffering shake in one's voice or bow (tremor and the shakes)
• passing out (dizziness, tunnel-like perception).

Often such single fears derive from a previous 'freak' occurrence, which typically is unlikely to recur and which has not recurred since its first onset, for example:

• needing to suddenly go to the toilet and being unable to reach it
• dropping one's instrument or bow
• losing one's voice.

More general maladaptive thoughts and fears include:

• making mistakes which subjectively speaking 'ruin the performance'
• forgetting words or one's place in the piece
• fear of silences in the audience which draw attention and focus onto oneself
• being unable to do as well as expected, faking or feeling a fraud
• being stared at in an uncomfortable way, implying humiliating or sexual thoughts
• losing control of one's mental state, panicking or going mad
• or sexual thoughts
• losing control of one's mental state, panicking or going mad.

Dealing with the different types of performance anxiety

For each performer, the particular combination of stressors may vary considerably: some are no problem, while others are. Dealing with the problem is a matter of identifying the particular elements that cause maximum discomfort, then finding the best ways of dealing with them.

The most commonly encountered forms of performance anxiety are the following (note that one or several can be present).

• Classic 'stage fright' - a learned anxiety response to previous bad experiences.
• Self-confidence issues, feeling a fraud or an outsider.
• Interpersonal anxiety - fear of disapproval or bullying by others.
• Burnout - anxiety over progressively diminishing interest and effectiveness.
• Physical injuries and problems that interfere with maximum efficiency.

The reason for being careful to separate the global term 'performance anxiety' into distinct areas is to optimise our treatment strategies. It is necessary to know what has happened to us in the past to give rise to such anxieties, and then deal effectively with such 'triggers' so they do not continue to disturb us in the future.

Self-confidence, interpersonal anxiety, burnout and injury are dealt with elsewhere in this book. The classic form of 'stage fright' is the main focus of this chapter.

Managing learned fear responses

The common type of performance anxiety usually referred to as 'stage fright' is often the result of a sequence of bad experiences. These are frequently 'first time' experiences, such as our first day in school, the first time we had to stand up and recite something to the class from memory, or our first time in a local youth orchestra. Such experiences can 'condition' our behaviour to associate fear and the prospect of failure with performing in public. This is known as a 'learned response'. As we have seen, conditioning can result in either a feeling of generalised anxiety, or can express itself as a repetition of particular facets of performance which have gone badly in the past, as seen in the maladaptive thoughts listed above.

Another cause of stage fright can be linked to childhood. An over-protective family member who constantly worries about the child, whatever he does, vividly imparts this fear to the child. This figure is usually a parent, and often the mother. The child then becomes afraid of the consequences of actions by empathising with the fear being expressed to him. Such fear can be of being away from home, mixing with strangers, eating certain types of food, going on aeroplanes or being in a big city. Since touring often involves all of these elements, it can be a debilitating experience if such imparted fears have not been extinguished.

Early this century, the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov did some pioneering experiments with conditioning and learned responses. Pavlov's experiments with dogs showed that a dog will salivate when expecting food. This he regarded as a normal response, so he called it an 'unconditioned' response. He then rang a bell each time the dog was presented with food. The dog 'learned' to associate the bell with food and started to salivate each time the bell was rung, whether there was food or not. It had 'learned' to salivate to the sound of a bell. Pavlov called this learned response a 'conditioned' response. The dog had been 'conditioned' to salivate to the sound of a bell.

Exactly the same happens with learned responses where we are the performer. The panic is not intrinsic in such things as talking or writing one's thoughts down on paper. With presentations, for example, we talk to groups of people without panic, and the large majority of us can manage to speak to a group of strangers competently when reading from notes. For feelings of panic to be present we must look for some association that overlays the activity, or some 'learned response'.

Onset of conditioning

The onset of conditioning can be very sudden, and two or three similar experiences - including non-performing disasters like being sick in the playground, or forgetting a recitation in front of the class - can cement the association. The obvious inner logic is the lurking threat that 'if it can happen once, it can happen again'.

Subject A

This clarinet player had bad food poisoning while playing in the school orchestra, and passed out during a rehearsal. When he came to he was on the floor, looking up at members of the orchestra standing over him and the conductor panicking and calling for the school nurse. He later developed a fear of passing out during a rehearsal, associated with the fear of dropping his clarinet and losing control.

Subject B

This girl had to run in a race at her school sports day. She arrived in a panic only seconds before the start of the race, after a large lunch and a bumpy car journey. After running a short distance she was violently sick, and fell on the side of the track, retching. Later that week she had to sing in front of the school, and again arrived late after a heavy lunch (mothers, please note...). She panicked, and ran off to the toilets where she was, again, very sick. As a result she developed a constant fear of being sick every time she had to stand up and sing in front of an audience.

The first thing that is apparent from these case histories is the real sense of drama we feel as we read them. It is not the performing that is dramatic, it is the 'catastrophic' fear of losing consciousness or being violently sick. They illustrate how such fears can be overlaid on performing. It is as if a bell goes off on stage and brings back an old historical panic that was the result of one freak experience. This old experience will not quite go away and haunts the unconscious as a reminder that things could get totally out of control.

Such panics are irrational. They are only rational in the sense that something like it actually happened once. But the chances of those exact circumstances being repeated are as unlikely as bells going off every time we eat a bowl of cereal. These initial responses were in the vast majority of cases conditioned by a particular set or cluster of stressful events.

Example of a cluster of stressors:

A violinist got up early on the day of a rehearsal, unable to sleep. He also noticed that he was coming down with a cold and felt slightly feverish. He spent the morning writing letters and on the telephone, and decided to have a short practice just before lunch, rather later than he had planned. Towards the end of the practice a string snapped, and he looked for a replacement. He was horrified to find he didn't have any, and quickly got ready to go out. His car was at the garage so he took the bus into town. Unfortunately the bus was late, so he got to his usual music shop half an hour before the rehearsal. To his horror they didn't have the string he wanted, so he ran out into the street towards the nearest music shop, which did have one. He couldn't find a cab for a while, and so ran several streets towards the rehearsal room before flagging one down. He sat down just as the conductor was coming on stage. After about three minutes he panicked completely.

Let us count the stressors in the above scenario:

1. Lack of sleep
2. Feeling feverish
3. Setting out later than expected
4. Equipment not working
5. Having to rush unexpectedly
6. Physical exertion and anxiety just before playing, increasing adrenalin
7. The humiliation of being late

How do I know it won't happen again?

The first thing to do in cases like the above is to make the sufferer from stage fright aware of the number of stressors in the original scenario. Having done so, you ask the question, 'Is it likely that this exact cluster of events will happen again?' The answer is almost inevitably no. The next question is 'So why do you think you will get the exact same panic response again, when circumstances will not be the same?' This is a difficult question to answer, and helps neutralise the pervasive idea that 'it will all happen again'.

Generally speaking, anyone who has fallen victim to such freak occurrences will say, 'How do I know it won't happen again?' We do not know that another world war will never happen again, but we do not plan our lives around it. If we did, everyone would have a bunker at the bottom of the garden with enough food to last a year or more. We carry on with our lives under the assumption that if freak events actually happen, we will deal with them as and when they occur. We do not allow them to stop us carrying on with the normal processes of living. Life itself is an unpredictable event, but it is generally safer than it is catastrophic. If the natural life expectancy is about seventy years, then this is what we base our assumptions on. Similarly, the natural expectancy of a performance is that trained professionals will do it competently, and this is what we should base our assumptions on.

Memory

Performing in public also requires control over your memory. If you have a memory lapse it disrupts the piece. Some performers are particularly fearful of memory lapses and believe, often wrongly, that they are prone to them. This can be worse as one grows older, since there can be a pervasive feeling of losing one's memory because of age itself. Not trusting your memory can further pre-dispose you to nervousness, which itself increases the likelihood of memory lapses - a vicious circle. Add to that the cumulative effect of a succession of memory lapses, even if these are no more frequent as the years go on.

There are some memory techniques that help, one being to learn a piece backwards so that in performance it becomes progressively more familiar. In the case of musical soloists it is not considered good etiquette to take the score onto the platform for recitals, but this is being challenged, not just in the case of difficult modern music but by world famous soloists like pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who would take the score onto the platform in his later years. Some soloists agonise over this choice. Others become conductors so that they always have the score in front of them - a little known reason why some well-known figures turn to conducting later in life.

Formalised ritual

It seems paradoxical that classical music itself is an expression of the most profound and unrestrained human emotions, but that in the classical concert hall this is carried out in an atmosphere more reminiscent of the reading of a will, with all the interested parties looking critically on and waiting for the essential details to be unfurled. The performer is expected to express all the raw emotion in the music in circumstances of great decorum. The popular club musician works in a much more relaxed environment. Since he can start again if he wishes, get up and walk out for a few minutes, eat a sandwich, have a glass of beer or talk to the audience a little, he generally suffers a lot less from stage fright.

In the world of classical music the audiences generally have money and social status, and behave in public with commensurate restraint. Occasions like the extremely informal and patriotic 'Last Night at The Proms' in London show how pleasant music-making is when it takes place in an atmosphere of fun. Such evenings of entertainment were typical of concerts before the twentieth century, when programmes were longer, with more breaks, and included varied and popular items.

Today, classical musicians are bedevilled by stage fright during performance - this was claimed by 58 per cent in a survey by W. Schulz of members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and is worst in Japanese orchestras, a country with very formal cultural aspects. It may be that the formality of modern classical concerts 'heightens the occasion', and that audiences enjoy this elevated mood, just as they enjoy dressing up and state pageantry; but moves back to more informal dress and behaviour have by common consent resulted in a more relaxed atmosphere which means less stage fright for the musicians.

Stage fright as a defensive tactic

There is a paradoxical way in which fear of one particular thing going wrong is used to eliminate fears of the whole performing situation. You would reasonably expect a top professional to be conscious of potential difficulties in any number of areas. In music, for instance, this would be fast tempos, long, slow tempos, pianissimo playing or modern scores. What one typically finds, however, is that one isolated area is used as a symbol or trigger for stage fright. In violinists it may be playing quietly at the tip or the heel, or playing in the middle of the bow; in wind players it may be playing quiet, exposed entries; in brass players it may be finding the perfect embouchure for certain passages, in dancers it might be a grand jete en tournant.

Typically, such top professionals will say, 'If I don't get that particular thing in a piece I'm alright', like a driver might say, 'If I don't go over seventy miles an hour I feel there's no real risk', or a child might say, 'I'm not afraid of any animals as long as they are not snakes'. Since the risk is associated with just one thing, it is eliminated from everything else. In practice, this may result in the performer anticipating with dread 'the bottom of page 5' in the piece, but as soon as that is past, everything becomes alright again. Logic tells us that, when driving, there are risks other than speed, and that many animals besides snakes are dangerous. Focusing on one fear may be a lot easier than being engulfed by a whole number of potential threats.

This rather clever mechanism is like the Inner Game technique of focusing on one thing to take one's attention off other fears. The paradox here is why there is just one fear and not several, and why that particular fear can go on for years and years of a successful professional career where the sufferer in question says, 'I'm not really worried about the rest of my performing.' This paradox is not at all apparent, and is concealed by the fact that the 'particular stressor' is a real and genuine fear. If one has to worry as a matter of principle, surely it is better to choose just one thing rather than worrying about everything, particularly if that one thing occurs fairly infrequently.

Dealing with stage fright and the fear of things going wrong

We have seen many illustrations of how panic responses can be overlaid on performing situations. For those who suffer predominantly from feelings of fright, the following measures apply. The essential parts of unlearning these responses are:

1. Identify how the panic response became associated with performing in the first place. Take a detailed history, including other non-performing panic situations, if they are relevant.
2. Begin to dissociate the 'conditioned' panic from the essential process of performing. Monitor performances to identify and deal with any particular 'triggers' you may be sensitive to.
3. Acquire a conscious strategy of mental reactions to respond immediately to recurring triggers.
4. Acquire a sense of history and reality: the original 'catastrophe(s)' that caused the panic happened through a freak combination of factors that will not be exactly repeated in normal performing.
5. Acquire a sense of scale: nerves - however unpleasant - are not the same as utter panic. You can perform through them and survive.

Unlearning panic responses is not necessarily a case of extinguishing all fear in all circumstances, since this would be plainly unrealistic - performing is technically difficult and a large audience is a slightly awesome phenomenon. But a goal of reducing fear to manageable levels is attainable and can have a permanent effect. 'Being a bit nervous' is fine, and doesn't mean being out of control. Performers who take determined steps to conquer stage fright usually find they can make good progress. Working with a performer over time it is possible to accurately chart the worst situational variables affecting performance, and then factor them into performances, confront them, and reduce their power to surprise and upset.

During the process of replacing melodramatic fears with controllable nerves, there is usually a period of disbelief. During this initial period, feeling better alternates with feelings of increased nervousness - 'What if something goes wrong?' or 'How do I know this is really going to work?' Typically, recovery is achieved in a sort of saw-tooth progress, with better and worse days but a steady overall improvement.

With this improvement comes the last necessary step in the process, that of replacing one's negative self-image - 'I'm a person who suffers a lot from stage fright' - with a positive one - 'I get a few nerves like everyone else, but it rarely stops me doing my job, so I don't worry too much about it.'

Figure 7.2 - Stage fright: classical conditioning (learned response)

Cognitive techniques

Cognitive therapy consists, at its simplest, of identifying negative beliefs and thoughts, analysing them, and replacing inappropriate beliefs with positive ones that stand up to reality. The order of doing this is as follows:

• Identify the troublesome belief, e.g. 'If I make one mistake, the whole piece is ruined.'
• Analyse it and examine the evidence, e.g. 'What do I mean by 'ruined', and what do people really want in a performance?'
• Challenge the belief in the light of reality, e.g. 'Will people even notice it? Is perfection possible again and again in real life? Do people really put one slip before the total artistic effect of the whole performance?'
• Change the irrational belief to a better one, e.g. 'A few fluffs, though better avoided, are less important than the quality of the whole performance.'

This type of intervention is popular in counselling at present. Real gains can be achieved in relatively few sessions by concentrating on the problem itself, rather than the general background of the person.

Since performers can be emotional people who come to conclusions through gut reactions, a cognitive approach may at first seem foreign, since it means using our 'thinking' or analytical faculties. Even after a problem has been deconstructed, a new belief system will only really work after it has been internalised and translated into our own inner language. Because they use the analytic functions, cognitive techniques can supply the objective reality that a 'Feeling' world may need in order to see exactly what is going on. Proper analysis enables us to 'attribute' the problem to the right causes. So question whether the problem is:

• Internal or external
  Is what is going on: inside me - my reaction, my feeling, my fault?; or outside - someone in the cast, the band, external circumstances?
• Permanent or temporary
  Do I always need to have these feelings? Or am I really experiencing something temporary that may go away if I make it?
• Global or specific
  Does this feeling of unease affect everything - will I fall apart completely? Or does it affect just part of me - I will feel more nervous than usual but this will not stop the performance going successfully.

It can be seen from the above that narrowing down anxiety to specific things means far less likelihood of feeling 'engulfed'. An external explanation should be preferred to an internal one, a temporary occurrence preferred to a permanent one, and a specific reason preferred to a global one. The resulting effect might give the rationalisation: 'I'm feeling a bit stressed at the moment because I didn't get enough sleep, but I am confident that I can still perform up to a professional standard, and it is quite likely that things will improve as I get more into the performance.' On the other hand, concentrating on internal, permanent and global factors might give the feeling: 'I feel stress engulfing me for no reason - my whole performance is doomed from here on, and I don't know how I'll get to the end.'

To bring problems 'down to scale', you are particularly encouraged to avoid catastrophising. Learn to distinguish between anxiety and panic. One clever piece of self-persuasion is to divide stage fright into two distinct types:

• anxiety, which is uncomfortable but manageable and does not prevent performance
• panic, which is very debilitating and causes dizziness and disorientation.

You then persuade yourself that extreme 'panic', where carrying on is virtually impossible, is in fact most unlikely, and so all that remains is that sort of anxiety which is manageable. Consequently, when there is an increase in anxiety levels, the message to yourself is, 'This is controllable - I can deal with it'.

If you have lived through several performances in which you were uncomfortable but in which you got through the whole part and no real disaster or 'catastrophe' actually happened, you can make the surprising but true realisation that you may be more capable of surviving fear or terror than others. Far from being unable to cope - which is your subjective feeling - you are in fact able to perform through frequent episodes of anxiety. By reminding yourself that you can play through fear, you are telling yourself that you do not need to be afraid of it - you can cope.

Some other cognitive readjustments to typical belief systems are worth looking at and understanding. An example is adjusting your style of performance to suit your personality type.

• Extraverts - make good contact with the people in the audience, and allow yourself to feel good when they pay attention to you and show interest.
• Introverts - create a dialogue with the author or composer when you are on stage. Tell yourself that the audience is there to hear the work, not to look at you. You are 'not there', merely the vessel through which the spirit flows.
• Teachers (and those with didactic tendencies) - think of the audience as children. Show them what the piece is all about.

Social models for performing environments

The drama triangle

The Drama Triangle consists of three parts, as shown in Figure 7.3.

The 'drama' happens when the roles switch over, as when the 'persecutor' turns into a 'rescuer', or the 'victim' turns into the 'persecutor'.

The perception of the performer suffering from anxiety is that the performer is the 'victim' and the audience or one's fellow performers are the 'persecutor'. In this case there are useful switches that can immediately improve the situation. If the performer acts more like a teacher, trainer or all-round educator of the audience, then the performer can feel more like the 'rescuer'. If the performer is angry or irreverent - as in much stand-up comedy - the performer is acting the 'persecutor'. These two states can alternate, as seen in successful performers such as Dame Edna Everage, who shifts from rescuer to persecutor. The key is to avoid the victim role, and consequently its emotional quality of fear and vulnerability.

Figure 7.3 - The drama triangle

Figure 7.4 - Transactional analysis in the performing situation

Transactional Analysis

In the TA model we refer to people as combinations of three 'ego states' (Parent, Adult, Child), and 'transactions' as being relationships between a particular ego state in the subject and another ego state in the object. In the performing situation, the performer typically feels as 'Adapted Child', while the audience or fellow performers are typically felt as 'Critical Parent' (James and Jongeward, 1978).

This case - where the performer feels the need to satisfy the demands of the audience - is shown by the bold text and solid arrows. A useful switch that can immediately improve the situation is for the performer to move out of the Child ego state into one of the other states, shown by italics and dotted arrows. The performer can switch into the Adult state, to get a more rational grip on the proceedings, or into the Parent state, either as Nurturing Parent (generously helping and informing the audience, who may then become more like the Child state themselves) or as the Critical Parent (as stand-up comics do when goading and making jokes about the audience).

Alternatively, the Child state may shift from the Adapted Child, which is reactive to a 'parent-like' audience or fellow performers and their perceived criticisms, to the Free or Natural Child, who simply performs happily in its own way, not caring about the audience, or plays with rather than against the audience - as seen in Woodstock and many other big rock concerts where the audience is encouraged to clap, dance and otherwise have fun as they would in their 'Child' states. The same is true of the 'Last Night of the Proms', when the audience dresses up and acts in a generally silly and fun way.

The Socio-Biology model

One Socio-Biology model (Dawkins, 1989) that is particularly useful is what is called 'The Prisoner's Dilemma'. In this model there are two participants. These participants have a series of transactions between them (like moves in chess) where each makes a move. The options are either 'Co-operate' or 'Non co-operate' and the scores are as follows:

Player 1	Score	Player 2	Score	Total score
Co-operate	3	Co-operate	3	6
Co-operate	1	Non co-operate	4	5
Non co-operate	2	Non co-operate	2	4

If we use this as a model for interaction between performer and audience or performer and colleagues, then the strategy of co-operate/co-operate clearly gives the biggest total gain for both parties. However, the situation is unstable in that if one party chooses not to co-operate while the other co-operates, the non co-operator instantly gains. The co-operator then becomes unwilling to lose out and switches to non co-operate. The overall strategy then lapses into non co-operation because although the total benefit to both parties is less, the chances of either party suffering a greater individual loss is avoided.

In the performing situation, the most effective strategy is obviously co-operate/co-operate. The total gain for performer and audience is greater, the atmosphere is good, and the event leads to satisfaction on both sides - like the rock concerts where the band gets the audience to clap and dance and the audience co-operates. The total result is reduced when the performer does not co-operate, i.e. makes no attempt to get the audience on his or her side or feels negative emotions for the audience. It is equally difficult for the performer when the audience is unresponsive, as comedians know to their peril. The worst situation is where performer and audience 'give up' on each other, resulting in boredom and bad feelings.

The strategy is therefore for the performer to 'co-operate' as much as possible, particularly in the initial stages, so as to bring an unresponsive audience round to co-operating. When this happens the eventual gains will outweigh the initial losses to the performer. Entertainers know this very well, and will 'work' an audience until it comes round, thaws out, and starts showing a positive response.

Becoming 'panic-free'

Stage fright has been described above as a whole variety of different and sometimes interlinked symptoms and beliefs. The more flexible the methods used to combat it, the greater the likelihood of success. Try out any or all of the methods described, choose those that work best for you and familiarise yourself with an anxiety-reducing routine that works predictably.

As your overall strategy for reducing stage fright starts to work, there is a typically enjoyable feeling that 'things are now better'. However, this is often followed not only by the worry that 'maybe it will all come back again' but the paradoxical idea that 'the longer I go without a disaster happening, the more likely it is that a disaster will ultimately happen'. This is no more true than the likelihood of a coin coming up tails after it has come up heads five times: the odds are still exactly the same. The odds of panic recurring are, in fact, infinitely less than flipping a coin because, in the overwhelming number of cases, the expectation of panic is built on isolated 'freak' occurrences which are extremely unlikely to happen again. Such paradoxical and habitual 'catastrophising' has been widely reported in studies of anxiety, and is part of the anxiety itself, not of reality. As the general anxiety lifts, the overall progress gets steadily better in a sort of 'saw-tooth' recovery pattern. There are still ups and downs corresponding to difficult performances and gigs, but these gradually flatten so that the worst cases are consistently less bad and the best cases are consistently better than before.

There is no such thing as a 'miracle cure' or 'getting better overnight just by doing this latest new technique'. Adjusting to reality means coping as well as possible with the constantly varying conditions of performing. The performer who becomes substantially more panic-free will, however, experience a new expectation. The old expectation that 'things will go wrong and I'll panic' becomes a new expectation that 'performing conditions may vary, but I sincerely believe and expect that I have what it takes to cope with that'.

What is needed to go with this new coping style is not just the new belief that 'I expect to be OK', but also a new self-image. When you become confident you may practise saying to yourself and to others, 'I don't panic unduly about stage fright.' Even better is to personalise this statement with a label - 'I'm a pretty panic-free sort of person.' Practising this label helps create the new self-image, just as saying, 'I'm a non-smoker' is more definite than saying, 'I don't smoke.' Both identify the new expectation, but personalising it really starts to make it sink in.

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From Secrets of Performing Confidence by Andrew Evans
© 2003 Andrew John Evans

'SECRETS OF PERFORMING CONFIDENCE' is available to purchase now from the A&C Black website.